Famed Syrian mosque a casualty of war

After . . . the remains of the Umayyad Mosque in Aleppo’s ancient city, an 11th century UNESCO World Heritage site.
Photos: AP

by
Hwaida Saad | Rick Gladstone

Beirut Fighting between Syrian insurgents and government forces in Aleppo has left one of the Middle East’s most storied mosques severely damaged, its soaring minaret toppled by explosives.

Each side accused the other of responsibility for the destruction at the Umayyad Mosque in Aleppo’s ancient city, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

The mosque is considered an archaeological treasure but has been a battleground for months.

It was first heavily damaged by fighting in October, and President
Bashar al-Assad
promised a restoration. But the Syrian military later retreated from the mosque and rebel fighters have occupied it since early this year.

BEFORE: The minaret of the famed 12th century Umayyad mosque before it was destroyed by the shelling, in the northern city of Aleppo, Syria.
AP

Syria’s state media said the Nusra Front, an Islamic militant faction of the insurgency, had placed explosives inside the minaret, which dates from the 11th century.

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Anti-Assad activist groups at the site posted YouTube videos showing the rubble of the collapsed minaret strewn about the mosque’s tiled courtyard.

Rebel fighters said it had been hit by artillery fire as part of an attempt by government forces to rout them and retake the mosque. “If he attacks all of the mosque, we will stay here, we will stick with our position, we won’t abandon our Islam even if all the world does," one military commander says in a video.

UNESCO has repeatedly pleaded for a pullback by all combatants from the mosque as well as other World ­Heritage sites hit by fighting in Syria’s civil war.

Last month the director-general of UNESCO,
Irina Bokova
, issued a public appeal in which she said she had called upon all those involved in the conflict to ensure the respect and protection of this heritage.

Fighting was reported elsewhere in Syria on Wednesday, including a town east of Damascus that insurgents had regarded as strategically important because it was a way station for their weapons and food. Activists said government forces had seized the town, Otaiba, after weeks of clashes, which if successful would complicate the ability of the rebel side in the area to resupply themselves.

Hundreds of Syrians have been reported killed over the past week in another Damascus suburb, Jdaidet al-Fadl, which anti-Assad groups have called a war atrocity and government media have described as a campaign to purge the area of terrorists, using President Assad’s description for his armed opponents.

The United Nations estimates that more than 70,000 Syrians have been killed and millions displaced since the conflict began as a peaceful protest against President Assad’s rule in March 2011.

It is now a civil war that has pitted his minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, against an opposition drawn largely from the Sunni majority.

The fighting has threatened to destabilise Syria’s neighbours, particularly Lebanon, where the powerful Shiite militant group Hezbollah, which supports President Assad, has sent fighters across the border into Syria. The Syrian town of Qusayr, near the Lebanese border, has become a focal point of sectarian tensions and potential clashes between Hezbollah militants and ­Syrian rebels.

On Wednesday,
Sheik Moaz al-Khatib
, the departing president of the National Coalition for Syrian ­Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, the main anti-Assad political group, angrily criticised
Hassan Nasrallah
, the general secretary of Hezbollah, over his support for President Assad and urged him to renounce the alliance.

“Is it satisfying to you that the Syrian regime shells its citizens with fighter planes and Scud missiles, mixing the blood and flesh of children with the bread?" he said in a speech, posted on his Facebook page. Citing a call by two Sunni scholars this week for a holy war in Syria, he said it was a response to the chilling events that were occurring, from the butchering of civilians and gushing of blood, to the screams of women in prisons.